Equipment developed at IPRE for well stimulation in the process of oil and water production

Summary form only given, as follows. Equipment for the creation of electrical discharges in fluids finds application for well stimulation in the process of oil or water production by restoring permeability of the well hole-bottom region affected during operation by the deposition of asphalt, resinous substances or mechanical impurities, breaking and removing a colmatant from the bore-hole walls, as well as by formation fracturing to increase permeability of the hole-bottom regions. Some attention to this problem is paid by Vovchenko (2001), where the results of application of the devices created at the IPRE in the oil fields of Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and China are generalized. The technology is realized with hole-bottom devices of the Skif4, Skif100 and SkifA types. The device of SkifA type was specially designed for water well treatment. Technical characteristics of the devices created at the Institute of Pulse Research and Engineering (IPRE) for different conditions of well treatment will be presented in the paper. Some new results concerning development of the devices and their pulse power system components (study of underwater discharge characteristics at high hydrostatic pressures, improving high-voltage pulse capacitors and charging devices intended for operation at the temperatures up to 373K) are considered. Limitations to the gaseous switch minimum volume caused by the demand for the switch stable operation are discussed. Several variants of the chargers are analyzed taking into account minimization of energy losses under the power transition along the logging cable.